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Ethiopia has 3.89 billion tonnes of oil shale located in Tigray State

Ethiopia has 3.89 billion tonnes of oil shale located in Tigray State, which borders Eritrea

Resources of bitumen or extra-heavy oil are reportedly present in many countries in Sub-Saharan. Africa: Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Nigeria, Angola, and elsewhere.

Some of these countries are now in early development planning phases of the exploitation of these resources with the help of European companies and their technological know-how, including BP, ENI,
and Total.

Ethiopia

Ethiopia has 3.89 billion tonnes of oil shale located in Tigray State, which borders Eritrea. However, there is currently a lack of interest in exploring the shale oil, possibly due to a previous dispute over the area which led to conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea. This conflict continues.

In addition to the region of Tigray, there is a smaller deposit of 100-120 million tonnes at the Delbi. Moyen coal development, southwest of Addis Ababa, although Ethiopia has plans to utilise this for manufacturing urea fertiliser (World Energy Council, 2007).

3.89 tones of oil shale will produce roughly about one trillions barrels of oil. That is huge amount oil if it is extracted successfully not it only it will be satisfy the local market but, it will have some left for export earning much needed hard currency. Many countries has lately have successfully extracted oil from oil shale one of these countries is Canada and it supplying 18% of the USA market.